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Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Listen to the Regents Meeting of July 16, 2013

The latest in regental recording archiving?

NOTE: THE BLOGGER PROGRAM SEEMS TO BE HAVING PROBLEMS TODAY. IT IS INSERTING PART OF AN EARLIER POST INTO THIS ONE. IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE READING THIS POST AS PART OF THE GENERAL BLOG ROLL, CLICK ON ITS TITLE TO SEE ONLY THE POST. THAT VERSION IS CLEAR. SORRY FOR THE INCONVENIENCE WHICH YOURS TRULY COULD NOT CORRECT.

We continue our practice of providing an archived audio of
Regents meetings until such time as the Regents commit to maintaining a
permanent archive.As noted on previous
blog postings, the current regental policy is to preserve the recording for
only one year.We’ll leave it to readers
to ask why a public board that seems to feel that UC isn’t up-to-date enough in
using IT for educational purposes can’t permanently archive recordings of its
meetings.

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The UC Regents Committee on Grounds and Building met yesterday.After a closed session, the Committee
discussed and approved a repair and reconstruction of a student housing
facility on the Santa Cruz
campus.Apparently, in the university’s
view, a construction contract built the facility with major design defects that
now require closing and a substantial repair.Although there was much description of what was wrong with the facility
and why it needed reconstruction, it was never clear how it happened that a
major project was allowed to be built with the faults described.

Similarly, a medical project was proposed for approval at San Diego.When the chair of the Committee raised a
question about a $40 million cost to induce local contractors to bid, the
answer was initially that the local contractors were busy with other projects
and had to be motivated to make bids.The chair asked why contractors from out of the area were not asked,
since in his view the national market was still soft and competitive after the
Great Recession.He essentially never
got an answer.But like the Santa Cruz
project, ultimately the proposal was approved.

It also came out in the discussion that the policy is that
if there is a cost overrun above the proposal, the Committee is only told about
it if the overage exceeds 25%.As
members then noted, essentially current policy amounted to approving $1.25 for
every dollar the Regents thought they were approving.The Committee asked the administration to
come up with something better.But
although a promise was made to do so, no date could be promised.

Also approved was a replacement of a pier in San Diego used for ocean research
ships.

We have noted many times that the Regents – absent an
independent auditing capacity – really cannot judge or track the outcomes of
the major capital projects on the UC campuses.The issue became apparent in the eventual approval of the UCLA Grand Hotel.But it arises with every project, almost all
of which involve really large capital expenditures.Ultimately, when mistakes are made, the funds
to deal with them have to come from someplace.Despite assurances about reserves, business plans, donations, etc.,
money taken from whatever source means less for some other purpose.